One of the things I have most admired about Age of Autism is its political neutrality over the years. I know that Autism crosses every boundary. I have met and become friends with rich and poor, every ethnicity, every profession and people with every political persuasion.

The blog today is a biographical because I feel I need to convey my unusual perspective. I also find myself at a crossroad of life. I believed. I hoped. I dreamed. So I am going to delve into the thing we are not suppose to talk about at the supper table when we have guests over, Politics.

Honestly I am just a really mixed up and confused individual. I am proud of the fact that I was on the #TCOT (Top Conservatives on Twitter) List top 150. At the same time I was working very hard for President Obama's administration to pass the Affordable Care Act. I even got a certificate and personal letter thanking me for my efforts. Both of these are incredible since I was born in Australia to British parents, lived in Canada, raised in Iowa and still have a British passport.

I now reside just outside a small village downstate Illinois. I often tweet about #RealFarmers and the fact the view as far as the eye can see out my front windows is bean and cornfields. This area is as Conservative Bible belt White as any in the Nation. Picture Mayberry Rural Fire District complete with Andy, Opie and Aunt Bee. If I were to have a second perseveration, beyond the study of Autism, I enjoy politics. By all measures, outwardly I appear to be a conservative, non denominational Christian business owner insisting on individual responsibility accountability and smaller Government.

Now this is where the story gets a little convoluted. I am not sure about the facts my Father was a story teller and embellished for dramatic purposes. This is what i was told and heard told many times over and over. My Father was born into a upper middle class family and actually attended private school with Royalty in the UK. He was born in Swanage at the Southern end of the country and spoke with a rather sophisticated accent from the south. My mother was from the rougher side of the tracks. Cockney true London accent. Her family was bombed out of their house during WWII and the Children farmed out to the North. My Grandfather invented a machine that made the fuel lines for planes and towards the end of the war had to keep it running all the time. It blew up and injured my Grandfather quite severely. Enough, that it caused my Father to be apprenticed to the local foundry. This is how he crossed paths with my mother.

My Mum was beaten by the Nuns. She was called evil and unclean. She was very smart and received a scholarship to school but it only paid for books and tuition not dress and demeanor so she was bullied by many. It paved her life long yearning for education. As you can imagine these two were shell shocked and in many respects emotionally damaged goods. By the time I was 21, I had attended and been truly involved in 22 different religious denominations. My parents always said money is easy to pack. That is how they got started on their trip around the world. England to Australia with a two year old Daughter. Australia to Canada with two children. Canada to Iowa and then retirement back in the UK. Quite the adventure. My sister ended up in Tokyo, Japan. So other than Tanner, I have no blood relatives in the United States.

Finally we get to my crossroads. When I was approached by the Obama Administration to work on the Affordable Care Act I was told Autism services would be included controlled and enforced at the Federal Level. In just the last six months, it was moved back to the struggling States dooming the chances of fruition of the promises. Also I believed President Obama in his Pre first term campaign when he said he would appoint a national coordinator to oversee the various needs of the community dealing with Autism. We had visions of a cabinet level Autism Czar. This also did not happen. Throw in the fact, I have been on a roller coaster ride with the economy, losing day jobs and stressing the family, I guess I too am shell shocked.

I take responsibility for my actions. I am accountable. My experience the last decade dealing with Autism though has opened my eyes to many we walk past. Good hearts, hard working individuals with some really bad luck. Then I step back and ask really, Bad luck? Maybe it is a system that is flawed? Upside down in many respects. I have read that maybe prisons should be forced to make up deficits with box tops and Bake sales instead of Schools. Maybe we should treat our returning Military families with more dignity and respect. Maybe we should hold up a mirror to greedy corporations whose thirst for money is out of control. In what respect is a corporation Human? The vigor we pursue the separation of Church and State should be applied to the infiltration of corporate influence on our Government.

I will step down off my soap box now. I have come out with the fact that I am a foreigner in a land of immigrants. I can't vote. I can't hold office. Many say I should keep my mouth shut. I believe in the possibility of World Citizenship. I will however keep fighting for our kids. My party? The Canary Party. Join U.S.

Tim Welsh, is one of the most active and influential Parent Advocates for Autism. Avid Speaker, blogger, and Twitter (@TannersDad). Tim works to build unity within the Autism community, Gain Insurance coverage reform, End Restraint & Seclusion, Advocate for services, prevent wandering and much more. Tim & his wife Cheri have one son Tanner (16).

Favorite tweet…“I have a son he has autism, but, I also have dream. I dare dream of a world where profound regressive autism is not only treatable, but is also preventable”

Comments

You can follow this conversation by subscribing to the comment feed for this post.

Benedetta: regarding states pushing HPV vaccines on kids
I've come to believe that these "entering middle school" vaccines and high school vaccines are merely designed to pre-empt any patterns of brain healing after brain damage due to vaccination. Think about that pattern that used to be alluded to that a child would have gotten better on his own with or without biomed, that incenses the warrior parent who has pulled their child out of the ditch. Well, what happens when that child gets the next set of vaccines? More injury and maybe worse. By interceding with more vaccines, including flu, children who would otherwise possibly heal and improve in many physical and behavioural ways with enough time (and effort) in between vaccines, can instead be forever locked into an ongoing specifically-timed medical pattern and it can then be asserted that they were "like this their whole lives" and the up and down pattern of injury and healing based on vaccine timing becomes less apparent to the general public. Sick kids remain sick. Lends to the notion that sickness is normal and if the sickness is autism and the child with autism keeps getting vaccinated, makes it look like autism can't be healed, either. Oh what a tangled web they weave . . .

Kentucky is not like West Virginia and Mississippi;
We are suppose to have a religious exemption.

We moved to Michigan during my son's Freshman year. I told the teachers what had happened, about the three vaccine reactions, and they put a vaccine exemption right in front of me and said that was all I had to do was sign it. It was so easy. Not just what he was allergic too - but across the whole band of vaccines including the Hep B. I think God was looking out for us at that time - he knew I was still confused on all this vaccine stuff. A Hep B would have killed him.

But then we moved back home to Kentucky, and I was given a really hard time. No religious exemption was put in front of me - the little school nurse made me go to the doctor and get a note. She gave me a hard time - really.
Even after I told her that it was in his childhood records no more whooping cough shots. She was not even after the Hep B shot.

This President is in no way, shape or form even remotely qualified to be our country's leader! Obamacare is so flawed that it will never work! It is not cheap enough for individuals to sign up for, unless their employer quits offering group health insurance. The carriers also offer less coverage for a higher premium. Basically what will happen is the carriers will lose money because not enough sign up and the ones that do are not the intended target, which is the young and healthy! The insurance companies on the exchange will probably lose money due to the expenses being more than the incoming premiums! The kicker is that forcing people to have health insurance does not give people access to quality healthcare! Quality healthcare comes by having a knowledgeable quality medical professional who treats you and by passing legislation that requires a higher standard of care and forces insurers to pay for that care no matter what! Obamacare, was intended to put more money in the pockets of health insurance companies!

The governor of Kentucky is a Democrat and is very pleased at how every one in our state is signing up for the Affordable Care Act.
He says he is eager and ready to start pushing the HPV vaccine for both girls and boys.

So as far as I am concerned I hae one party that wants to outright maim and kill and the other party wants to change tort laws so no one has to pay for it.

I think it says a lot about the healthcare industry that the Canary Party exists at all, but this is an industry that has had much governmental/corporate intervention controlling what is allowed to be defined as "care" and who gets to practice and who gets to choose so I guess we have to have to get politically involved to try to protect what I think should be left as a personal choice and personal responsibility.

Regarding the divisiveness of politics, I think that is being used by those who run things from the shadows. We keep voting for terrible representatives, letting them feel pretty comfortable with continuing being terrible, because the "other guy" is sure to be worse, at least he/she sounds worse. And why is there generally only one "other guy" to choose from? You could say also, at least I know I am, that many are guilty of not paying attention enough to what we vote for--and I'll add that the media doesn't help, but the internet is making more candidate research possible. I honestly get sick to my stomach about some of the people I've voted for, some of the things I believed were necessary policy, now that I'm hopefully a little more educated, though that doesn't mean I now wish I had voted for the "other guy" either. It's a poor consolation, but in hindsight I'm pretty sure "the other guy" the way things are controlled would have done pretty much the same things in substance with a few party-specific token differences and probably with a lot of party specific rhetoric.

So I guess I'm leaning towards viewing the system of large centralized power as a main problem, that and our debt-based money system which fuels the growth of the federal entity, and most of what the federal government does now is actually unconstitutional as the Constitution intended all matters not delineated to be left to the states or even more local authority, if not to each individual's personal self-governance. The increasing concentration of power at the federal level attracts the corporation vying for favor. In fact, corporations probably feel they have to play the political game to stay afloat rather than just focusing on providing a service of competitive value that actually improves people's lives. It also obviously attracts those who love the power they can exercise by purchasing policy through centralized authority. It attracts people to office through corrupting perks. It even perhaps attracts most of us, though we have little influence, as it surely seems (or seemed?) easier to fix the vaccine injury epidemics or any other problem by trying to influence policy nationwide rather that state by state or locally.

And our current type of monetary system is completely counter to what was established in the Constitution and it wasn't changed by the constitutional amendment process so how is it legal? It makes it very easy for officials to make promises, set up spending programs, go easily into war "making the world safe for democracy" etc. because they don't have to so much pass a direct tax to fund these things. People don't see up front the actual cost of what they are getting from their government. The debt based, concoct-money-out-of-thin-air to provide interest revenue for a few and to fund ever growing government programs, foreign "aid" which is often used to direct governments against the wishes and needs of their own people, and military "intervention" promising to make our lives (and everyone's blessed with our intervention) better actually continually decreases the purchasing power of everyone not receiving the new funds immediately, hurting the little guy the most (more $ means the value of existing $ goes down and everything increases in cost), so the little guy feels even more in need of aid (unless they are the extremely independent minded type I guess) and dependent upon their "caring" government and more willing to vote more power to the government to tax and take in exchange for promised benefits, never-mind that we don't actually get any kind of financial statement showing us where the money goes and to what quality of "caring" projects we are supporting. So in vaccine injury land we have this very costly bureaucracy (FDA, CDC, NIH...) that we have been funding that is supposed to be protecting us, making good "recommendations," and quite a few of us now know about moral hazard in a very painful personal way, and in exchange for the legislating away of right to trial etc we pay a tax when we get a "recommended" vaccine to cover the token few that will be acknowledged by the system to have been injured. And really, I think every family I know who has children born in the 1990s or so has been adversely impacted by what the federal government has done in the vaccine program. The cost of all this "protection" has been huge and the protection really a facade, but not many see it.

Tim, thank you for this thoughtful post. I agree a cabinet level expert should be appointed. The current interagency committee is a dud, the IACC. Their mission is clearly to push the belief that autism is only a difference. The disability of language disorder and other neurological handicaps has been totally ignored.

I received a form letter in response to the effect that Obama remains committed to leveling the playing field for all Americans with disabilities, including those with autism. He wants to screen children before age 2, and continue to work with congress, experts, and families to improve ASD programs. In other words nothing should be investigated to prevent autism.

I wrote back to Obama and expressed my disappointment to have received only a form letter response, which did not even make any mention of the obstetric procedure I think may be responsible for many cases of autism.

I await a second response, which will likely be the same form letter. I have had no better luck with my senator, Elizabeth Warren, or John Kerry before her, or Ed Markey.

Tim,thank you for this post.There should be more like it.You have had avery interesting life,and it would be great to hear more about it.Obama made his stand on autism very clear,right after he appointed Ari Ne'eman to the National Council on Disabilities.While he could have appointed the parent of a severely autistic child,he hose to appoint Ari Ne'eman.http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2010/10/exclusive-ari-neeman-qa/

Right from the start,Obama showed that he wanted to put a happy face on autism,by appointing the highest functioning,least autistic person imaginable.I wonder if Obama was aware what a controversial and divisive person Ne'eman is among the autism community.

My Senator is touring my neck of the woods today. So, I went to see him.

His plane was late. and he was not there but his Aid was, and his Aid gave the speech.
Many of the questions were about the Affordtable Care Act.
My Senator is a Republican so the Aid spoke about the repeal of the Affordable Care Act
Which lead many in the room to remind us all that we were having a lot of trouble before this Affordable Care Act, and so it's repeal would put us right back were we where. before..

Then there was the talk of lowering health care cost. As in doctors have to perform unnecessary test just in case -- to keep from getting sued. Tort reform was then suggested by the Aid as what might be needed.

SO - I have a question to all of you on this website: Is the vaccine compensation of 1986 a tort reform?

If so it served the American people poorly.
For vaccines not only cause autoimmune diseases, but brain injuries. Bran injuries leads to mental illness and mental illness is co morbid with drug addition.
Well my part of the county is just ruined.

Hi Texasmom, Yes there are needed some drugs, of course. In fact here in Virginia I just received in the mail from a Canadian source a prescription for $30 that two local Virginia drugstores quoted me $250-$300.

Well known health advocate Gary Null specifically identifies many U.S. prescription drugs that are priced literally hundreds of times their manufacturing costs. The giant Kaiser Family Health Foundation cited in their annual report just two years ago that Pharmaceutical Companies spent $72 BILLION dollars for promotions and advertising to the public and health professionals. $72 BILLION - in only one year.

I receive a glossy magazine for Physician Assistants (PAs) with a dozen or so patient cases and other medical info - About 1/2 of the pages are drug ads each with about 2-3 pages of side effects (I hate the jargon 'side effects' when in fact they are 'directly dangerous effects').

Back to my main point: NIH and CDC et al. have sold out and betrayed their public trust.

Texasmom,
The devil knows how to be useful and even nice sometimes - necessary for gaining power and control. No is saying to get rid of Pharma (at least I'm not), but Pharma needs to be cleaned up, big time. For every person taking a drug that is truly needed and life saving, there are I don't know how many people taking drugs that they don't need and shouldn't be on because of aggressive, deliberately inappropriate marketing and dishonest research reporting (not reporting negative results). And of course there have been hundreds of thousands of deaths from their knowingly unleashing harmful drugs on to the market like Vioxx and Avandia.

Individuals working for Pharma may be honest, good folks, but the people running those companies have lost their souls.

David, It's easy to say that Pharma companies are big, greedy corporations that don't have patient best interests in mind. While this may be true, I have met plenty of great people in the Pharma industry who care about the autism epidemic (many have children affected) and are focused on helping patients live longer and more fuller lives. I don't know about you or your family, but several of us are on life-saving drugs and we need pharma. My pharma friends have said that the cost of getting a drug through clinical trials, FDA submission, and to market in multi-million if not billion dollars in cost. Why? Maybe we need to have oversight with the FDA and government.

Maybe you or a Canary Party delegate could get with this organization to insure not just access to the adequate and appropriate health care of choice, but also freedom from forced medication against a family's wishes.

Tim, Thank our stars for men and women like you. Since we are being personal I would like to add my opinion to your statement "Maybe we should hold up a mirror to greedy corporations whose thirst for money is out of control."

In my view 'greedy corporations' as epitomized by the pharmaceutical realm are facilitated and empowered by our elected and appointed public servants that put their own personal autocratic institutional power above their supposed (and sworn) public duty to protect the public from corporations and companies that indeed put their profits above safe products.

Specifically, our American health generals at NIH and the CDC are infinitely more protective of their ill-deserved reputations, their personal power, and their ever-increasing $billion dollar budgets - while for decades they have suppressed, ignored, defamed, and defunded honest scientists who have clearly shown the carnage inflicted by medically insane pro-vaccine and pro-drug dogma. More specifically, the two worst malfeasant public-officials are NIAID's Anthony Fauci and NIMH's Thomas Insel. I'm sure everybody can add their own "favorites" that would take a couple pages.

On a personal level many family members (including me) have incurred life-changing damage or iatrogenic death only made possible by the purposeful dereliction of such 'public servants.' And, yes, I carry a grudge.